The Scent of Sea
by Santeira
Summary: If you’d accept surrender, give up some more…SenKo OneShot For ivybluesummers


_For_ **Ivybluesummers**

**Title: The Scent of Sea**

**Pair: SenKo**

**Stat: One-Shot**

**Summary: If you'd accept surrender, give up some more…SenKo One-Shot**

**Note: **_First attempt at real shounen-ai, so forgive me for lameness thereof. I'm trying something light and I wrote this last night. I borrowed a sentence from Daniel Odier's Luna, but I'm not sure which one, maybe it's a bit of here and there from Harry Potter too. Don't kill me yet, okay. Please criticize me. Thanks. :D_

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**Disclaimer:** _I own nothing_

After carefully placing his bags of wedding shopping on the desk in his room, Kogure Kiminobu crashed on his bed, and shook his wrist out of his coat to reveal his watch. He had had an exhausting day, traipsing around, trailing his soon-to-be bride in the bridal house to find her dress and his suit. On preference—he would sooner go to work and face a pile of in-tray documents than to do it, but then again, he had no more reasons to delay.

Because he had only delayed for too long.

"Maybe, you're just restless, you know. It's pretty usual, men are like that, when it's only weeks to their big day," Sendoh, once the god of Ryonan, now his godly housemate had said in the phone. "I've gotta ask you one question though, Kimi-San. Why are you getting married?"

Of many questions, Sendoh had to ask him that. Huh, why else would one marry a girlfriend of three years? Because everybody else was doing it. Akagi had done it. Hisashi had done it too.

"Why are you asking me such question?" Akagi had answered with a question, and a frown. "Men get married. There's a decree written somewhere about it. You should get married too."

So, it was like a large gap that sawed right out of the middle of everything that made us and our world seem to make sense, like the simple, optimistic philosophies our ancestors were trying to make us live by.

"Ah, must everything be that complicated, Kogure? I married her because I love her, it's that simple..." Hisashi, Kogure's friend of long standing had said, concurrently crooning a lullaby to the infant in his arms.

"But you can still love her even if you're mot married."

"That's right, I've thought about it too. But relationship will have to face a lot of trials, you want to make a statement somehow, so some other bloke would not risk the chance of hitting on your girlfriend. You want parents' and the society's approval of the two of you. But at the end of the day, you just do it because you want to."

Yes, Kogure could see it in Hisashi's face. His woman-child and his son was Hisashi's recent cocoon of bliss. Kogure wished it was that simple too. Hisashi used to seem repellent to all these—triumphing in machismo—picking fights in the streets and nurturing bloodied lips, but now he was attending a toddler and pouring warm milk into baby's bottles. His wife was cooking lunch in the kitchen; even the apartment seemed different, somehow.

_Change is a thing a guy'll do after a fall;_ and Hisashi's case was one fatal. It brought smile to Kogure's lips.

"Goodbye, Hisashi."

And on impulse he took the plastic bag, extracted the suit and felt its material.

_Kimi._

"_This would look great on you._

"_Everything has to be perfect for our special day._

"_Do you love me, Kimi?"_

And he had endured the whole thing because he knew, _later, _he would be home from his office and Sendoh would be back from his own. They would go and watch the ocean together. Sendoh's sanguine smile was always gratifying—everything seemed much simpler by his side.

"Don't worry, mate," he said, as he patted Kogure's back. "This will pass."

So they continued talking, and they would talk about everything, about the past, the present and the coming days, all the way to the first red splinter of twilight. In Sendoh's company, he would relish the violent sea wind and watch the glorious sunset.

"You would be my best man, Akira-kun?"

Kogure thought he saw something gutter in Sendoh's eyes, when he turned to look at him after a long stillness.

"Ask me for anything, Kimi-San. But not that."

Those were the two simple sentences that destroyed Kogure.

* * *

The days seemed to pass quicker when Kogure wanted them to slow down. On a crazed note he felt like screaming at them to stop, because half an hour to his time of oath, he felt like had been left half a month behind. And questions began to sprout in his head, like the blooming flowers at the first break of morning. 

He remembered talking to the guests, but he had no idea what they were talking about. He remembered seeing Hisashi, Akagi, Miyagi, Sakuragi, Rukawa, Haruko and Ayako on the guest seats, but he had no idea who they were. He remembered fiddling with his collar, noticing how his bow felt strange and improper. His best man was her naïve little brother, and was not much of an assistant either.

He took a gander at his wristwatch, but he did not know what time the watch's fingers were pointing to. _This will pass_, Sendoh had said, and yes, later he would feel much better when this was over, but things would never be the same again. Something in the younger man's words, or the sunrise they had watched together, had made him unable to forget.

The organ started to play the anthem. It was the cutest backyard wedding compared to any other couple's backyard wedding in the history of the world, according to her. And she emerged from the entrance, looking radiant as ever, marching toward Kogure on the red carpet with her father, glowing in high spirits and swaddled in tight elegant wedding dress. Female guests were gawking at her with sickly-sweetish and positive flickers in their eyes.

"We'll have a family get-together on my yacht _later_, Kimi-San," her father had said.

But later was always the time for Kogure, later was his time for Sendoh Akira, _later was their time together_. It had been that way for years now, when he had gotten bored with work, or her, he would convince himself of later. But the _later _that Kogure had always looked forward to, was fading away, like Sendoh Akira. Later was gone.

So, as she stepped up the altar, face veiled by cream satin that complemented the daisies and laces that ornamented the walls, he took her hand and put the ring inside her fingers, and balled them.

"I'm sorry."

Guests' sharps gasps, her wails, his parents' calls and her parents' curses accompanied his leave-taking in unison. He heard Hisashi call his name, but there was no looking back. Hisashi should understand why he did it more than anyone else.

"Goodbye, Kogure," he thought he heard Hisashi say.

* * *

The seagulls were flapping in the wind as high he could see, amidst the twilight, they were finding their way home. When they were gone, there would only be the sound of the ocean waves crushing the sandy shoreline, raging in its lone voyage. There would no longer be the cries of the seagulls to harmonize it, it would dwell perpetually on its immense loss, longing for its flying friends to come accompany it, till appear the crack of dawn. 

"Your bow doesn't make a perfect knot, Kimi-San," Sendoh commented, as he held Kogure from behind. Shoeless, with Kogure still clad in his wedding suit, they stood on the pile of rocks at the edge of the shore.

"There's no such thing as a perfect knot." Kogure replied, feeling Sendoh's nibbles on his neck. The mixed scent of sea and Sendoh was overwhelming, and later they would have the world to themselves.

Later, and for a long time.

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**End**


End file.
